The Hand That Feeds
by orchidvines
Summary: A drowned headmistress, a scorched preparatory school, the enigmatic and evasive Henry Tilney, and all the other kids seem to care about these days is twerking. Cat Morland will never understand. Modern AU Northanger Abbey.


_That looks really creepy. I must see it._

Cat Morland, with her keen lack of self-awareness and morbid curiosity, eyes the double brass doors at the end of the corridor. It's practically a siren call.

Music pulsates from the auditorium, and she can hear screeches and laughter. Occasionally, a classmate of hers will stumble out into the hall and flash a saucy smile, only to be reeled back in by an impatient girl in a skimpy dress.

Her eyes drift back to the end of the hall, the doors of which have been chained shut for the last fourteen years. The scorched and long-abandoned East Wing of Northanger Prep is really the only aspect of _remote_ fascination in this droll hellhole.

"Cat?"

She shuts her eyes. _Shit_. Nadine is back.

Nadine Allen looks overjoyed to see her, so Cat plasters the most banal smile on her face for her cousin's sake. The girl, sandy-haired and a little plump, rushes to her side and sticks there like a postage stamp.

"I've been looking everywhere for you! You don't want to dance?"

"Nah," Cat shakes her head with a smile. "I'm kind of over Homecoming. It was never really a big deal at my old school."

That's half true. But also, she definitely needs a breather from dodging John Thorpe's never-ending offers to dance. That boy is a douche and a half.

"It's a _huge_ deal here. Get on board," Nadine insists. She straightens the hem of her dress. "I'm a little mortified. Isabella Thorpe is wearing a coral dress too. I mean like, hers is _totally_ a sweetheart neckline and has Swarovski crystals embedded into the train but this is _kind_ of an issue."

Cat frowns, thinks about choosing her next words delicately, but then changes her mind. "Who cares?"

Nadine stares at her as if she's just sprouted three more heads and for a moment, Cat wonders how their fathers were even siblings. "_Every_body cares," Nadine says.

She gets a swift swell of homesickness for Fullerton High, her public school back home, renowned for its lack of fucks and the stoners camping out in the bathrooms. Also for the sex scandal that rocked the district back in 2009.

Nobody cares about _anything_ at Fullerton; its graduation rate is dismal. But it's been two weeks here at Northanger. Two weeks of boys wearing polos and boat shoes, two weeks of girls who are blonde, thin and sun-kissed. Everybody's dad is an investment banker and everybody's mother volunteers at bake sales and shops at Lilly Pulitzer.

Dennis Leeds eventually finds Nadine and pulls her away to dance, and Cat breathes an audible sigh of relief and slumps down to sit on the floor. She is vaguely aware that she's ruining her dress, a short pretty cream-colored number she rescued from a clearance rack at Macy's, but she can't bring herself to care. Her dark hair has been falling out of its chignon for the last half hour, so she twists a tendril round her forefinger and stares absently at the barricaded East Wing, formulating explanations for its secrets in her mind.

The legends about it are muddled, but two facts are pretty concrete. The place went up in flames on November 11th, 1999—the very same night that the headmistress, Genevieve Tilney, disappeared. Her body was found five days later in Burbage Park, at the bottom of a shallow lake. An alleged suicide. The case was since closed.

"She was apparently a little _Looney Tunes_," Nadine had told Cat the first night she arrived, from the living area of their dormitory suite. "They found a bunch of narcotics in her system. Don't ever talk about in front of the Tilney twins though. Lord knows this district can't wait to cycle those two out."

Cat has never officially met the Tilney twins, but Eleanor Tilney is in her physics class. She sits up front and stays quiet, except for constantly answering Dr. Leonardi's questions. All she knows about Eleanor is that she is quite brilliant, and that her golden blonde hair is always pulled back into an enviably perfect ponytail.

A gaggle of girls bursts out of the ladies' room and Cat watches them as they filter back into the auditorium. Isabella Thorpe stalls for a moment, her brilliant train catching the light. She smiles down at Catherine. "Pretty dress."

The other girl starts, surprised. "Thank you," she answers, mollified.

Isabella flips her red hair elegantly, as if complimenting the girl sitting on the floor is as noble as bottle-feeding a starving child in Africa and filming promotional celebrity videos for UNICEF. She rejoins her friends, and the corridor is peacefully silent once more.

"Don't know if I'd trust that one."

Cat turns. There's a boy standing several feet away with the hood of his sweatshirt drawn up. He's wearing jeans and he has his cell phone out—and he's smirking at her. "She's a tricky one."

"She seems nice," Cat argues.

"Good. Then she's doing her job right." The boy turns back to his phone.

"You know," Cat says thoughtfully, suddenly emboldened by his cynicism. "Life isn't exactly a teen film. She doesn't _have_ to be the Regina George of Northanger."

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of Regina George," he counters smoothly without looking up. "Al Pacino in _The Devil's Advocate_, maybe."

"_Ouch_," Cat laughs. She stares at him without really meaning to, and he confronts her gaze.

"You admiring my outfit?" he asks playfully.

"Well, you're not exactly dressed for dancing, are you?" she retorts.

"_Au contraire_," the boy smiles as a reflex. He's got dark expressive eyes and a wide mouth. "The truth is that I don't normally go to these things. I'm just picking up my sister. Now if she would answer her phone, that would be pretty cool." He doesn't say it angrily at all, but whimsically. As if it's all amusing to him.

"You don't live here?"

"I do. But we're home for the weekend since my dad is back in town. We're military kids."

"Oh," Cat nods and purses her lips. She stares at the end of the hall as shyness overcomes her. That's when his voice murmurs from within close range: "It's haunted you know."

Cat gasps and whirls around. He's sitting next to her now, not close at all, but close enough to startle her. Intentionally, of course. He's laughing at her expense. "_Wow_, you're jumpy. That was so much easier than I thought it would be."

"You scared the _shit_ out of me!"

"That's what I was going for."

A beat. "Is it really haunted?" Cat asks, timid.

He turns to gawk at her, and she realizes that his eyes are hazel, not brown. Then he grins. "You're a _transfer_, aren't you?"

She purses her lips. "Maybe."

"Where from?"

"Fullerton High."

"_Yeesh_," he chuckles.

"Something wrong with Fullerton?" she asks primly.

"Not at all," he says. "If you like burnouts and thieves. I love 'em. They're the best company. Never a dull moment. What's your name?"

"Are you like, _interrogating_ me?"

"I like am."

She's blushing now. She's sure of it. Her face feels unnervingly hot. "Cat."

He takes her hand and smiles. "Henry."

John Thorpe pokes his head out of the doorway and calls her name. Cat can't believe how horrid her luck is because _here_ her douchebag assailant comes, ready to harass her into a dance again. Can it even be called dancing? Civilization _must_ be in some sort of moral decline in an age where boys can sneak up behind girls, gyrate their hips into their posteriors and call this romance. "Isabella told me you were out here but I refused to believe it. I thought to myself: how could Cat be avoiding _me_, of all people?"

_I didn't think Isabella knew my name._

A cell phone rings and the boy called Henry answers, rising fluidly to his feet. "Hey there. Yeah, I'm by the office. Meet you in a minute." Then he turns around. "Nice meeting you, Cat."

"You too."

She watches him round the corner and disappear from view. Her lips part and her brows knit together, puzzled.

John doesn't even try to conceal his jealousy. "Glad to see you're becoming friends with the right crowd. I'd be careful if I were you. Henry Tilney is what you call your standard elusive troublemaker. I'm sure your school had one, too."

Her blue eyes widen, and she pivots her head back towards the charred chained doors, yearning for their secrets. "Not exactly."

* * *

**Author's Note:** This is what happens when it's pouring outside and you're between shifts at work. One-shot.


End file.
